


The Hitman's Apprentice (the bechdel test remix)

by coloredink



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Female Friendship, Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 10:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11942418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloredink/pseuds/coloredink
Summary: "Why'd you wanna be a Turk?" asks Kisaragi."None of your business," says Elena."C'mon," says Kisaragi, "we're gonna be stuck here for ages getting up the mountain and then Don Corneo's gonna do God knows what to us. We might as well talk."





	The Hitman's Apprentice (the bechdel test remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neurotoxia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurotoxia/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Hitman's Apprentice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005632) by [Neurotoxia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurotoxia/pseuds/Neurotoxia). 



"Hiho, hihi, hohi, hiho!" Don Corneo leans in. His breath smells like pickles. Elena tries to lean away, but if she leans back any farther she'll fall flat on her back, and she doesn't want to know what'll happen then. Not that she's in a good position now, with her arms tied behind her back and more rope wound around her torso, pinning her upper arms to her sides, and her legs tied together as well.

"You're a pretty one," Corneo coos. "They sure are making Turks pretty, these days. Pretty and young. You'll look so beautiful in our wedding bed. I think I want the red sheets on for you, hmmm, yes, crimson sheets, hihi, hiho, hihi!"

Elena tries not to gag. She keeps her chin high and her expression straight, like Tseng would if he were in this situation. But Tseng would never be in this situation.

The walls of this room are made of paper. Literal paper! Elena's furious that she hasn't escaped by now. But the ropes are secure, and Don Corneo's men were frustratingly thorough in their weapons search, finding not only the knife that Elena had in her boot, but the one in the jacket lining and the one strapped to her calf. They even took her bracelet on the off chance some of the beads were materia, which was right enough. Of course, Elena's own body is a weapon, but only when it has freedom of movement.

Corneo brushes one knobbly finger against Elena's cheek in what's probably supposed to be a tender gesture. Elena readies herself to bite his finger--off, if she can at all manage it. But at that moment, a door opens somewhere, accompanied by high-pitched shrieking.

"You can't do this to me! Do you know who I am?!"

The door to the room slides open, and one of Corneo's gorilla-faced goons peers in. "We got another one, boss," he intones.

Corneo brightens. "This really is my lucky day!" He bounds to his feet. "I want to see her."

"Problem is, Strife might've seen us come in here," says the goon. "We should probably scram." Elena wonders what keeps Corneo's henchmen loyal to him, considering his downward spiral into ignominy. Probably money. A lot of money.

"Fine fine, just as well, just as well," Corneo says without the slightest hint of concern that Cloud Strife, perennial thorn in Shinra's side, who's already screwed Corneo over once, might be hot on his heels. "We've got two, two for the price of one! Then let's go!"

More goons crowd into the room and hoist Elena first to her feet, and then off her feet entirely, carrying her seated on their arms like she's an honored guest at a parade. Once she's in the other room, she sees why Strife is supposedly in hot pursuit: the other girl--and she is indeed a mere girl--is one of his new gang members, the native Wutaian, Kisaragi. She's been similarly bound and hoisted up between two henchmen.

"My father's gonna kill you!" Kisaragi rants. "He's gonna kill all of you, and that's if I don't do it first!"

Corneo is clapping, his lizard eyes bright. "Oh, this one's even better than the other one!" he says, and Elena feels a wave of relief, followed shortly by a wave of disgust at herself. Even if the girl's one of Strife's gang, nobody deserves the attention of Don Corneo.

Strife does burst through the doors then. He recoils at the sight of Corneo, which Elena supposes is the correct reaction. "You?!"

If Corneo is surprised at Strife's sudden appearance, he doesn't show it. He just spins in place, arms wide, and crows, "I have my bride now--two for the price of one, in fact! Two for the price of one!" He does a little jig toward the end.

"Two?" Strife looks up. He and Elena make eye contact for one brief, startled moment before the goons bear Elena up the stairs and through the door. She hears Strife's shout behind her, and she feels a brief, shameful flutter of hope--if anyone could get her and Kisaragi out of this situation, it would be him--but then they're through another set of doors, out into the bright, clear air, and dumped in the back of a Jeep and roaring away, up the mountain.

\-----

"If you have the energy to scream, you should be trying to escape," Elena snaps. She practically has to yell to be heard over the rattle as the Jeep makes its way up the unpaved mountain roads.

"You think I haven't tried?!" Kisaragi does a full body wiggle. "These ropes are impossible! And they took all my stuff, even," she slumps, "even my materia. That materia was gonna save Wutai."

At least the girl isn't crying. Elena doesn't know what she'd do in that case. "Then I guess all we can do is wait for rescue and continue to look for opportunities to escape on our own."

"Yeah. Yeah! Cloud'll come for sure." Kisaragi brightens. "I mean, he wants his materia back, right?"

"...right," Elena says after a long, blank pause.

"And the Turks will come for you, right?" Kisaragi says, eyeing Elena's uniform, which is sadly dusty and torn by now.

Elena takes too long to answer, during which time Kisaragi's expression transforms into one of first surprise, and then pity. That last one is what spurs Elena to bark, "The Turks do what's in the best interest for Shinra and the Turks. If there's no benefit to rescuing me, at least a benefit that's greater than the cost, then they won't. And that will be the right thing to do, and I won't blame them for that."

"Geez, that's cold," says Kisaragi.

"It's the way of the Turks." Elena flips her hair out of her face with a jerk of her chin.

The Jeep takes a curve at such a high speed that it almost goes up on two wheels. Elena and Kisaragi, unsecured in the back, lurch across the floor and end up almost on top of each other. They struggle apart and upright again. Elena's lost sensation in her hands.

"Why'd you wanna be a Turk?" asks Kisaragi.

"None of your business," says Elena.

"C'mon," says Kisaragi, "we're gonna be stuck here for ages getting up the mountain and then Don Corneo's gonna do God knows what to us. We might as well talk."

"There is no 'might as well'," Elena mutters.

"Fine," says Kisaragi. "Then I'll tell you why I wanted all that materia, even though you're from Shinra and the Turks and you're one of the enemy. That materia was gonna save Wutai."

"You said that already," Elena points out.

"I know!" Kisaragi scowls at Elena. "Dad banned materia from Wutai as a sign of Wutai's complete surrender to Shinra after the War. And now Wutai's this totally lame place where tourists can come and take pictures of the pagoda and attend a tea ceremony and go, ooo, check out the native culture of Wutai! And Shinra's completely taken over the world. And Wutai's got nothing, not even materia." Her chin drops almost to her chest. "I want to be proud of Wutai. I want Wutai to be a place I can be proud of!"

Kisaragi suddenly looks every inch of her age, and it makes Elena aware that there aren't that many years between them. Elena's the newest Turk right now, the youngest Turk. Not that long ago, she was Kisaragi's age, and what had she been doing then? She'd had a dream herself, one that she strove for daily, against what had seemed like overwhelming odds--

"My sister was in the Turks," Elena says.

Kisaragi's head jerks up. "Really?" she says.

"She was always better than me at everything," Elena says. "So I wasn't going to join the Turks, actually. What was the point? I was only ever going to be compared to her unfavorably. So I swore I was never going to learn how to use a gun and that I'd never be a Turk."

"What happened?" Kisaragi asks after a stunned pause.

"My sister died," Elena says.

Kisaragi doesn't say anything. Elena doesn't look at her. She looks out at the landscape. Behind her, she imagines the face of Da Chao looming up, the same color as the mountain. But ahead of her is the rolling green fields, the river, a sky so blue it almost hurts to look at. It's so different from the rocky, barren landscape around Midgar, the smog-choked sky. She knows the poor who live in the slums below the Plate resent not being able to see the sky; what they don't know is that the sky isn't worth being able to see.

"Wutai is a place to be proud of," Elena says.

"Sure!" Kisaragi exclaims. "They used to be great, and they can be great again--"

"No," Elena says. "Wutai survived, and it continues to survive. There's no shame in surviving however you can when the whole world is against you. That's something to be proud of."

Kisaragi just stares at Elena, her eyes large and round. The Jeep grinds to a halt, and Elena tenses. The silence itself seems loud, without the sound of the engines and the vehicle bouncing over rocks.

"The second you see an opportunity, take it," Elena hisses.

"I know, I know!" Kisaragi says through her teeth.

But Elena doesn't ever see that opportunity, because they just hit her over the head, and all she sees is darkness.

\-----

Elena must have been out for a long time, because it must have taken forever to get the ropes around Da Chao's face like this. It's clever as well as showy, because Elena is afraid of struggling too hard; there's nothing but sheer cliff face below her, and even if she manages to escape the ropes, it's only to plummet toward certain death. But maybe that's preferable to being in the clutches of Don Corneo? At least death would be quick. Probably.

She wishes she knew if the others were coming. She tries to think objectively: would she rescue herself, if she were in their shoes?

Don Corneo paces back and forth on Da Chao's outstretched hand, thinking aloud to himself about which of these fine fillies he's going to choose. His voice carries surprisingly well up here; something about the way the canyon conducts sound? Or maybe it's the wind? Whatever it is, Elena wishes it didn't, because she doesn't like hearing herself and Kisaragi being talked about like cuts of meat. Neither does Kisaragi, apparently, though she's a lot more vocal about it.

"GROSS!" she yells after Corneo spins and points at her for his bride. "I'd rather die!!" And she starts thrashing like she means it, like she's about to send herself to death below.

Which is when Cloud Strife and his gang come running up, thank God. Elena has never been so relieved to see them in her life. They think of themselves as do-gooders; even if they're here just to rescue Kisaragi, they won't leave Elena in the lurch.

And then, to her relieved surprise, Reno and Rude are there too--although they conveniently seem to wait until Strife and co. take care of Corneo's new draconic pet. But that thought occurs to Elena afterward, because at the time she's hanging upside down, blood rushing to her head, bitterly certain that she's about to die. Strife and co. may think they're going to save the world, but they're evidently incapable of saving two women.

But Reno and Rude do come, and Rude disarms Don Corneo with a single well-placed gunshot, and she watches Reno grind his shoe down on Corneo's fingers until they give way and Corneo is the one to get turned into a "squashed tomato." Elena wishes she'd gotten to do that herself, but damsels in distress aren't rewarded by being able to squash their tormentors. If they wanted that, they should never have allowed themselves to be kidnapped in the first place.

She tries to keep her mouth shut, she really does. She clamps her lips together. But Reno's looking up at her and he's too far away to make out his expression, and Elena blurts out, "Thank you! I didn't think you'd come!"

"Elena, don't act so weak," Reno replies breezily. "You're a Turk."

Elena's pride swells fit to burst. She _is_ a Turk. Reno and Rude came for one of their own, after all.

"Hey!!" Kisaragi yells. "This is nice and all, but get! Me! Down! From! Here!"

Even the girl has a point, Elena thinks. And then, because she's been hanging upside down for quite some time now, she passes out.

\-----

She wakes up in the back of a Jeep again, but this time Rude's at the wheel and Elena isn't tied up. Her head is pounding. Elena tries to sit up, but all the blood rushes to her head and she quickly decides to lie down again.

"Hey," says a voice from the front of the Jeep, "I think she's awake." Reno peers into the back of the Jeep. "You awake, Elena?"

"Ugh," is all Elena can manage.

Reno chuckles and clambers into the back of the Jeep with her. He hands her an unstoppered flask. "Easy does it."

Elena doesn't know what she's expecting the contents of the flask to be--a Hi-Potion, maybe? But it turns out to be whiskey, and she coughs and sputters and tries to pound her chest. It burns all the way down into her belly, where it lights a glowing fire.

"Hey, I said to take it easy," Reno says, another laugh in his voice. He stoppers up the flask again and tucks it away inside his jacket. "Sorry it took so long for us to come get you. Rude and me waited to see if you'd come back on your own."

"Sorry to disappoint you," Elena says in a low voice.

Reno gives an easy shrug. "Happens to the best of us."

Elena lies back down. "But I'm not the best of you. I know that."

"Hey." Reno's voice sharpens. "I'm not gonna stand by and listen to a Turk get shit-talked about, even if it's a Turk talking about herself."

Elena gapes up at him. She finds her wits just enough to say, "Yes, sir."

"Damn straight. Now I think you owe me a drink, after the day we've had," says Reno. "And Rude, too. It's still our day off, you know."

"Yes," Rude says from up front.

"All right," Elena says, and she even finds her smile. "All right, yes. Drinks are on me."

\---end---


End file.
